How Axel Used To Be
by ClumsyMooseProductions
Summary: “Roxas… wait.” He said, voice raw with the emotions he couldn’t feel. AkuRoku
1. standing on the edge

_what it takes to make it real.  
we're standing on the edge of this,  
when our soul is gone what will we miss?  
we lost what it takes to really make it feel._

save us, cartel.

* * *

Axel slammed his hand into the wall, not caring whether he shattered his knuckles again or not. He couldn't stand it. The Organization was taking over him, and he couldn't bear to lose what semblance of himself that he had retained. His only escape was in Roxas. Number XIII. Nobodies couldn't feel, true, but he was anything but apathetic towards the shorter blonde. He didn't know what it was, but something drew him to the boy. He seemed… different. He brought out everything in him that reminded him of emotions, which was the closest he could ever get to feeling them himself. 

Roxas cringed at the sound Axel's fist on the cold stone made. His fingers had been broken so many times by the same action, and each time they healed more strangely than the last. His hands looked dangerously out of proportion to his slender wrists. Wincing, the younger boy slipped over to Axel and pulled him slowly away from the wall.

"Dammit, Roxas!" Axel exclaimed angrily.

Roxas flinched involuntarily, but drew himself up to his fully height. "You've never gotten this angry at Marluxia before… why start now?"

Axel sighed and looked away. "I just… I don't… it doesn't have to do with him, exactly."

"Then what does it have to do with, Axel?" Roxas scoffed. "You stomp in here every day, and every day you get worse and worse. You can't tell me why, or who, or what's going on. You're just angry. You say it's not me, then treat me like shit. I deserve to know what's going on with you! You're my…"

"I'm nothing to anyone, Roxas. Don't think I'll ever forget that. I'm a Nobody. A nothing."

"Don't say that!" Roxas yelped, a lump forming in his throat. "You're not nothing, Axel. You couldn't be nothing… not to me, at least."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Axel growled as he flung his arms out dramatically.

"I mean… I care." Roxas gasped as his back collided with the wall, knocking the wind out of him. He had hardly seen Axel move, much less shove him back.

"Don't you _dare_ try and tell me that you care about me." Axel hissed, his eyes narrowing. "Don't lie to me."

Roxas struggled to get away, but Axel's hands held him firmly against the wall. Blood trickled out of a tear on the knuckle of one of Axel's gloves, and he had to restrain himself from tending to it.

"Don't ever lie to me." Axel whispered, his voice sounding defeated in the cold stone room.

Roxas looked up at the older boy as concern flitted through his eyes. "I won't."

"But you do!" Axel retorted. "You tell me you care, that you could feel something, anything."

Roxas' only answer was to place his hands on Axel's shoulders and pull himself up high enough to kiss him. When Axel didn't respond he slipped out from his grasp and turned away. "I think so." He whispered sadly as he walked away.

Axel slammed the palm of his hand against the wall once again, then turned. "Roxas… wait." He said, voice raw with the emotions he couldn't feel.

Roxas turned, his ocean-tinted eyes void of emotion once again. Axel crossed the distance between them in two steps, cradling Roxas' face between his hands. "I… I'm sorry." Axel said, the repentance in his voice clear. "I don't know what it is that you think you can feel, but…"

Roxas stiffened. "What I think I can feel? Axel, I swear, these aren't just memories!"

"They can't be anything else! Roxas, we're Nobodies. We can't feel."

"I don't ca—" Roxas was silenced by Axel's lips on his. He suddenly didn't give a damn about what Axel thought, as long as he kept kissing him like that. He gasped in shock as Axel slipped his tongue across his lips, then ran it gently along the inner edge of his mouth. Roxas reached his hands up and ran them through Axel's scarlet hair, some rational part of him realizing that the odd angles it stuck out at must be natural if his hair was this soft. One of Axel's arms snaked around Roxas' waist, pulling the shorter blonde's hips against his.

Lifting the smaller boy off the ground, Axel gently placed him on the couch that rested near the doorway, kicking the door closed once again. Roxas sighed as Axel returned to the kiss, tilting his chin up with a single finger. He squeaked slightly as Axel kissed his way down his jawline and neck, gasping as Axel bit down savagely on the soft flesh. Axel smirked as Roxas squeaked, the sound seeming so unfitting when uttered by a panting boy. Every thought Roxas' brain could process centered on Axel, Axel's lips, Axel's hands running up and down his sides.

Roxas hardly noticed when the zipper on his cloak came undone, but the fingers slipping along his sensitive midsection could hardly go unnoticed. He froze, not knowing what to expect, but then Axel's hand slid lower, and he couldn't help but whimper in pleasure at even the slightest touch. Axel smiled wryly at the control he had over the younger boy, then ran a finger along Roxas' length. Roxas was hard in an instant, though his feverish moans meant Axel was hardly far behind. Positioning himself over the breathless blonde, Axel slowly ran his tongue along Roxas' inner thigh, working his way up to the point of the upside-down V his legs made on the black couch. Roxas' breath quickened with every centimeter Axel covered, then morphed into a high-pitched whine as Axel took him inside his mouth. He came quickly and without dignity, biting his lip to keep from screaming in front of the older redhead.

Axel licked his lips, looking for all the world like a smug cat. Roxas looked beautiful, panting on the midnight couch beneath him with his eyes half-lidded. He'd never met anyone who had pulled him in like this, who he'd even thought could make him remember these emotions. He couldn't feel, true. But could he remember enough to make this seem real?

* * *

a/n: standard disclaimers here. 


	2. the leftover you

_w__here do you go with your broken heart in tow_

_w__hat do you do with the left over you_

_and how do you know when to let go_

_where does the good go_

where does the good go, tegan & sara

* * *

Roxas left the older boy's room late that night, exhausted from the activities of the afternoon. He shut the door quietly behind him, wincing at the click the lock made as it fell into place. He would have to face Axel eventually, and he knew that, but now just wasn't the right time. He doubted any time would be the right time. He didn't want to explain to Axel that he could feel, wasn't just remembering, wasn't just imagining these emotions. Because that's what it was. Emotion. Everything from passion to fury, everything that Axel inspired in him, it wasn't a lie. It couldn't be.

Axel couldn't hear him when he said it, wouldn't listen to him. He didn't believe him. Every time he tried to say something, Axel would shut him up with a kiss, would slam his fist into the wall again, would create this perilous mixture of pleasure and pain.

It was that connection, that line drawn between pleasure and pain, that line which was crossed with every kiss. They never changed, just clashed together again and again. Every moment they spent together was a fight, every kiss was a defiance. All Axel wanted was to feel, and all Roxas wanted was to put his feelings aside. He couldn't feel, they told him, none of them could ever feel, all they knew was memories. They told him so much, but he couldn't trust any of it.

_Except for Axel._

But he didn't even know if he could trust Axel anymore. Axel had been his first friend when he came to the Organization, the only one who had smiled at him when he introduced himself. Well, not the only one. Demyx had smiled too, but Demyx was rarely without a smile. Something about Axel's smile was different… somehow Roxas knew that Axel was different too, not another void in this world's sea of emotions, not just a Nobody. He was Axel, and that was all Roxas wanted him to be.

Axel couldn't accept him, though. He wouldn't believe him, wouldn't trust him, wouldn't put any faith in Roxas. Every attempt he made to explain himself was brushed aside or silenced with a kiss, neither helping him figure out the tangled mess of thoughts inside his head.

"_Don't…_" the redhead's voice echoed in his head, "_Don't ever lie to me._"

He wouldn't lie to Axel, couldn't lie to him. He cared too much. No matter what Axel said, he knew that what he felt wasn't just a memory. It couldn't be. It was all too real, the emotions he felt too vivid to be just a superimposed remembrance.

* * *

Axel's eyes fluttered open, and the world in front of him came into focus. Above him was the sky blue ceiling, below him the midnight blue couch from the day before. He rubbed his eyes blearily, sitting up and stretching his neck out. _Next time_he thought to himself, _next time we're using a bed, dammit. _Because there would always be a next time. The Nobodies all turned to each other for ways to escape their existence, for ways to try and forget that they had no hearts, even if it was for only a moment. Even if they could only forget for a moment, they could forget. They could return to the way they used to be, return to the emotions they used to feel, return to something good and pure. The lives—no, that wasn't right. The time they spent in these forms was corrupted and evil, just a placeholder for death. They were nothings, Nobodies, mistakes that shouldn't technically exist. 

But they did exist. Or they at least pretended to. They pretended to know what they were doing, when in reality they were all scared of what might happen, what did happen. If fear was even something they actually could feel. But no… they couldn't feel. They could remember fear, of course.

There were those of the Organization who sought out fear, sought out the adrenaline rush that came from self-preservation. Those were the ones who came limping back, haunted looks in their eyes. They seemed so empty, as if a glimpse of the past drained them of their future.

Axel sighed, opening the door. _What future? _He asked himself wryly. Xemnas was so focused on Kingdom Hearts that he was consumed by it, spent every moment planning the demise of thousands more Heartless. It was almost funny, that the mindless Heartless had the very thing that the Organization's members most wanted—hearts. And they lost them like they were trinkets. The Heartless were the key to regaining a normal life, to regaining the shreds of humanity that the Nobodies had lost. The secret lay with the Keyblade… with Roxas.

No one knew what made Roxas so special. He was the keybearer, true, and the Heartless flocked to him, but he seemed different from the rest of the Organization. He wasn't just another Nobody. But then, Axel was biased when it came to the younger boy. It scared him sometimes, how close he could come to thinking that he felt something when Roxas was around.

* * *

Roxas wandered back to his room, curling up on the couch so similar to the one he had left. He didn't have anyone to talk to in this stone castle, no one but Axel. And he couldn't talk to Axel. Axel wasn't the same as he had been at first, he'd almost lost that _something _that made him different. And now Roxas was the only one who wasn't normal, the one who just wasn't like everyone else. 

He didn't fit in with the others, they didn't look at him as one of them. He wasn't the same as them. None of them gave a damn whether he lived or died, as long as his doing so didn't interfere with the Superior's precious plan. They all said they wanted hearts, that they'd do anything for them, but they were so focused on doing anything for them that they did nothing.

He didn't even know Axel anymore.

He thought he had, at first. They'd been so close. Neither of them could sleep well in the empty castle, and they roamed the stark hallways together in search of a diversion. At first their 'diversions' had been finding new rooms, whole new levels of the castle that no one ever went to. Then they progressed to finding the nearest abandoned room with a couch, seeking out sweet hours they could spend together without thinking about their lives. Existences. They weren't lives, they were just existences that had to be endured.

He couldn't take it anymore.

It didn't make any sense to stay here, be just a tool in this crazy plan, be used up by this Organization and then tossed away when they accomplished their goals. He'd spent too much time already waiting for Axel to come back to him, waiting for things to go back to the way they used to be, just waiting and waiting and waiting.

He wasn't going to wait anymore.

* * *

a/n: standard disclaimers. 


End file.
